Most of the work over the past few weeks has been on UI customization (CSS tweaks, few tpl edits, etc) as well as ensuring that Prestashops work flow marries well into how we work. I still have a fairly decent TODO list to work through but as holiday season has begun (3 social engagements last weekend alone!) I think progress will be minimal for the next 4 – 6 weeks.

However, DPS requires a merchant account (quite spendy to setup and administer) and this makes them a little spendy for some start-up companies.  Among the “we’ll do the merchant account thing for you too” there are PayMate, Paymex, etc etc and of course the US granddaddy PayPal.  The advantages of PayPal is that they are known (though this also becomes a negative as they have a lot of haters too), they have been around, most Shopping Carts offer a PayPal module, there’s heaps of online discussions, etc etc.  However, they are also big (do they care about little guys in NZ?), american and have a bad rap from some users.

I had a play with Prestashop and their PayPal module and got myself into all sorts of knots.  However, it turns out that most of my problems were due to a lack of understanding of the process of setting up the account & module and then again correctly setting up the accounts etc to use the SandBox (see Prestashop wiki and forum for PS requirements).  One silly little thing that got me stumped for a while was the fact that I had my seller account set to Payment Review enabled.  This led to Payment Errors emails being sent to my test user accounts, my backoffice and storefront getting out of synch and me assuming that I was experiencing a much documented problem as listed on the forums.  It is true that the PrestaShop PayPal module needs some love and attention but I was able to get it to function in the end.  Like many others I installed eCartServices PayPal v2 beta 2 which promptly highlighted where my problems lay (i.e. Payment Review enabled!).  I was then able to fix things up and revert back to PayPal v1.6  as the eCartServices module is not recommended for production environments.

That fixed my sandbox environment.  However, I’m still not certain which version to take to production.  I may have to add a cheap product to my store and do a few live tests just to be sure we are G-O.

Aha…I don’t speak french but (with Google translation I don’t need too ) here is a resource that lists the modules others have developed for PrestaShop and links to the PrestaShop forum for discussions of each module.  Now that makes life a little easier! [Update: 2 Dec,  Apparently, they've all moved to here now]

I also updated the code to:

• use FancyBox rather than ThickBox.
• replace the CSS so it looks more like FancyBox (in keeping with the rest of the site)
• add CSS to change cursor to magnifying glass (instead of having click to enlarge)

1. Download, extract and copy the FancyBox folder to catalog\view\javascript\jquery\
2. In catalog/view/theme/YOURTHEME/template/common/layout.tpl, replace ThickBox javascript includes with  FancyBox javascript includes.
3. Add the following to the bottom of catalog/view/theme/YOURTHEME/template/product/product.tpl
<script type="text/javascript"><!--

$(document).ready(function() {

   $(“a#product_image”).fancybox({
   ‘overlayShow’         : false,
   ‘zoomSpeedIn’         : 600,
   ‘zoomSpeedOut’         : 500,
   ‘easingIn’            : ‘easeOutBack’,
   ‘easingOut’            : ‘easeInBack’
   });

   });

   //–></script>

4. Replace class=”thickbox” with id=”product_image” rel=”product_image” in catalog/view/theme/YOURTHEME/template/product/product.tpl

• OpenCart 1.3.2
• Apply “backup” fix as described here
• Use admin to make TP specific changes e.g. nz tax, zones, currency etc
• Run sql script to delete everything not NZ specific

Called this dbase nz_starter

Extras/Modules installed

• Fido-X’s cart_checkout_132a – simple thing that adds CheckOut button to cart module
• Fido-X’s homepage_132a -multiple messages on homepage

1. - admin nav is a bit annoying.  I hate the hover over business for navigation.  Just give me a tree or expanding LHS nave or something
2. – bulk operations during setup?  I’d like to disable all countries except NZ.  I think another user has a fix for this.
3. – modules are installed overtop of existing code so really need to source control to ensure you don’t stomp modules overtop of modules (e.g. if two modules are modifying the same file)
4. – checkout process is a bit long winded.  I see other users have provided a Guest Checkout.  Will have a look at that.
5. + very easy to install
6. + has some locals and aussie users (more likely to get payment gateways that a relevant to us)
7. – it’s new so has a small user base at this stage (though it reviews well, especially by developers)

An update on the above:

1. I’m living with the annoying admin nav (not highest priority to custom this right now)
2. I’ve got sql scripts to delete the non-NZ stuff from the database
3. I’ve installed Mercurial VC and have it nicely intergrated into my IDE
4. It’s possible (both thru community contributions and my own efforts) to customize the checkout process so it is simplier and friendlier
5. OMG yes!
6. Some great little modules up for sale too
7. Yes, but at least the forums are (mostly) in english

So I’m still with OpenCart at the moment.  Code looks pretty decent too which makes a nice change.